4 ms·

Not sure Claude Design really competes with Figma. While it has a strong potential to let people iterate on using a design without the nuts and bolts of going

by jmull 6mo ago

Not sure Claude Design really competes with Figma. While it has a strong potential to let people iterate on using a design without the nuts and bolts of going back and forth with a designer, CD operates at the "leaf-node" level, where the output is generated. However, a lot of design has a deeper life-cycle than that. There's the collaboration, pitching, review, iteration, asset management, etc. In fact, the first step for using CD is "onboarding", where it sucks up a design system from your existing assets/resources. It presumes you already have a design. As it stands now, CD is one way... existing design -> task specific resources. This could be very useful, but only touches on a part of what a complete design tool does. But for iteration it's not so great. E.g. task specific concerns don't have a way to feed back to the originating design. Changes to the originating design don't have a direct path to feed back to the task specific output (e.g., when a logo or branding focus changes, or maybe just spacing guidelines are updated, the ad hoc processes around CD will have to be repeated if the changes are to actually land.) I'd think AI design integrated with Figma is in a much better position to address these more complicated scenarios. I doubt Claude Design even cares about these deeper scenarios, BTW -- it's intended as a leaf-node tool. Just pointing out it's not about to replace Figma or other more comprehensive design tools.

coldtea 6mo ago
>However, a lot of design has a deeper life-cycle than that. There's the collaboration, pitching, review, iteration, asset management, etc. If corners can be cut, they will. All those steps would be flatened to something like CD and a couple of side tools. Companies did "collaboration, pitching, review, iteration" because they had a designer in the loop anyway for the actual final work. Now that they don't have to, how many will just skip those steps, and if it means the end product gets less intented and "defined", they'd be fine with that?
- girvo 6mo ago
  Exactly the same thing as coding, where “we don’t want to lower the quality bar” platitudes are repeated, while in actual fact that’s exactly what they want from us with AI output, consequences be damned. The stock market will reward us for the short term play.
- cm11 6mo ago
  Agreed. I also think the collaboration, pitching, review bits have been heavily design theater for awhile. I'm not saying it was the designer carrying on the charade, but the product team generally. Those steps all really happen only for the final implementation to be a frankensteined fraction of what was discussed. I'm not saying anything remotely like we should be more respectful of the designer's effort, I'm saying there's so much wasted and unused design work. I'm saying you could cut that out of the process and you'd get a very similar end result. That end result might be bad (perhaps it would help to be more respectful of the designer's efforts), but it's the same either way. The requirements are so unstable—the product team has few strong beliefs—that they change the next day. And then again every few days after. Hopefully, the changes are small enough that design isn't full resetting each time, but it's not rare to have big changes. The entire project gets swapped not infrequently. What eventually slows the changes is the engineering deadline and the fact that the developers need to start. But the slow drip of product requirements means whatever time budgeting went to design shrinks. And whatever time went to engineering is eaten into such that now the design needs to be something that can be built in half the original amount of dev time. Each day the designer takes at this point eats into that window and so it's dictated by what can get built. I don't think that has to strictly be viewed like an entirely bad outcome, but for what it is and how it's accomplished, you could just cut the design part out. Besides, you're going to iterate later, right? Right?
  - coldtea 6mo ago
    >I also think the collaboration, pitching, review bits have been heavily design theater for awhile. I'm not saying it was the designer carrying on the charade, but the product team generally. Those steps all really happen only for the final implementation to be a frankensteined fraction of what was discussed. Absolutely. A chance for middle management and C-levels to bikeshed inconsequential bullshit and feel like they're doing something. >That end result might be bad (perhaps it would help to be more respectful of the designer's efforts), but it's the same either way. Can't be that worse than the slow to load, 50MB for a page, flat design full of wasted space shit redesigned every year or so to follow the new stupid trends that we're getting for the past 15 years
bcjdjsndon 6mo ago
> However, a lot of design has a deeper life-cycle than that. There's the collaboration, pitching, review, iteration, asset management, etc. Sometimes people want some graphics without it being like they're planning a wedding
sgarrity 6mo ago
I agree (at least for now) that Claude Design doesn't directly compete with the core Figma tool. It does directly compete with Figma Make - which is also an LLM-powered tool that generates HTML/CSS/JS output (not a canvas of components, like Figma's core product). I do think Figma will have a problem that people with think Claude Design competes with Figma directly. I expect people in leadership positions aren't comparing "Claude Design vs. Figma", but area comparing "Me and my product manager using Claude Design vs. A designer using Figma."

by jmull 6mo ago

coldtea 6mo ago

>However, a lot of design has a deeper life-cycle than that. There's the collaboration, pitching, review, iteration, asset management, etc. If corners can be cut, they will. All those steps would be flatened to something like CD and a couple of side tools. Companies did "collaboration, pitching, review, iteration" because they had a designer in the loop anyway for the actual final work. Now that they don't have to, how many will just skip those steps, and if it means the end product gets less intented and "defined", they'd be fine with that?

girvo 6mo ago
Exactly the same thing as coding, where “we don’t want to lower the quality bar” platitudes are repeated, while in actual fact that’s exactly what they want from us with AI output, consequences be damned. The stock market will reward us for the short term play.
cm11 6mo ago
Agreed. I also think the collaboration, pitching, review bits have been heavily design theater for awhile. I'm not saying it was the designer carrying on the charade, but the product team generally. Those steps all really happen only for the final implementation to be a frankensteined fraction of what was discussed. I'm not saying anything remotely like we should be more respectful of the designer's effort, I'm saying there's so much wasted and unused design work. I'm saying you could cut that out of the process and you'd get a very similar end result. That end result might be bad (perhaps it would help to be more respectful of the designer's efforts), but it's the same either way. The requirements are so unstable—the product team has few strong beliefs—that they change the next day. And then again every few days after. Hopefully, the changes are small enough that design isn't full resetting each time, but it's not rare to have big changes. The entire project gets swapped not infrequently. What eventually slows the changes is the engineering deadline and the fact that the developers need to start. But the slow drip of product requirements means whatever time budgeting went to design shrinks. And whatever time went to engineering is eaten into such that now the design needs to be something that can be built in half the original amount of dev time. Each day the designer takes at this point eats into that window and so it's dictated by what can get built. I don't think that has to strictly be viewed like an entirely bad outcome, but for what it is and how it's accomplished, you could just cut the design part out. Besides, you're going to iterate later, right? Right?
- coldtea 6mo ago
  >I also think the collaboration, pitching, review bits have been heavily design theater for awhile. I'm not saying it was the designer carrying on the charade, but the product team generally. Those steps all really happen only for the final implementation to be a frankensteined fraction of what was discussed. Absolutely. A chance for middle management and C-levels to bikeshed inconsequential bullshit and feel like they're doing something. >That end result might be bad (perhaps it would help to be more respectful of the designer's efforts), but it's the same either way. Can't be that worse than the slow to load, 50MB for a page, flat design full of wasted space shit redesigned every year or so to follow the new stupid trends that we're getting for the past 15 years

bcjdjsndon 6mo ago

> However, a lot of design has a deeper life-cycle than that. There's the collaboration, pitching, review, iteration, asset management, etc. Sometimes people want some graphics without it being like they're planning a wedding

sgarrity 6mo ago

I agree (at least for now) that Claude Design doesn't directly compete with the core Figma tool. It does directly compete with Figma Make - which is also an LLM-powered tool that generates HTML/CSS/JS output (not a canvas of components, like Figma's core product). I do think Figma will have a problem that people with think Claude Design competes with Figma directly. I expect people in leadership positions aren't comparing "Claude Design vs. Figma", but area comparing "Me and my product manager using Claude Design vs. A designer using Figma."